Take a good look at this picture. It is full of what I would call ordinary folk. None of them appear to be super heroes, to fit the heroic mould we have created for our social entrepreneurs and active citizens.

They are David Barrie’s fellow “bloody minded obsessives” who have collaborated on [...]

Good community leaders need to be connected, competent and of good character. That is one of the blindingly obvious conclusions of a survey in the West Midlands for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The researcher explains what they set out to do
This study examined the realities of citizen governance from the perspective of participants living [...]

I just want to say hello to Andrew Hemmings who moved from lurker to blogger after last night’s mini Birmingham Bloggers meet in the Spotted Dog. (Don’t panic, it was an impromptu meeting for Joanna Geary who will miss the next one this Monday 7pm at Rooty Frooty in the Custard Factory) Andrew talked to [...]

From  wikinomics with thanks to Euan.

Paul Caplan responded to this comment I made yesterday on this blog post with this explanation of what he thinks slow media is and why it matters. Thanks Paul. For taking the time.

There has been a lot of interest in Downing Street joining Twitter. But does it really mean much, or anything, that’s new?

At the moment number 10 is using it predominantly as a means to feed us links to press releases plus the odd Youtube film. Very good.

Within less than 24 hours 178 people [...]

A Birmingham Artist has released the source code to allow plants to blog.

More accurately it tweets. So I’m following it. No, that’s right.

No I’ve looked too and I still don’t understand.

Via D’Log – who probably does.

Update Tower Bridger Twitters! This I can understand. Thanks Antonio.

Anyone watching the Guardian Media Awards on Twitter may have had the chance of a real giggle at Pete Ashton and Stef Lewandowski’s growing frustration with the whole event.

It boiled over when Pete realised that the blogging awards (which included one for Created in Birmingham jointly with www.we-make-money-not-art.com and www.fromthefrontline.co.uk ) were not going to [...]